Iranian officials over the weekend and into Monday issued a series of statements emphasizing hostility toward the United States, days after a series of articles emerged suggesting that the Obama administration was in many ways laying the groundwork for a regional realignment that would grant the Iranians greater influence across the Middle East. The American Enterprise Institute's (AEI) Critical Threats Project conveyed statements from IRGC Navy Commander Brig. Gen Ali Fadavi bragging about the decline of American power and declaring that in the future conflict Iran "will provide security in the Persian Gulf" while the U.S. will be "in a position of passivity" (English, Persian). He insisted that Iran's energy-based influence has grown despite how "the evil of the Great Satan [the US] remains." Fadavi's remarks came at the same time as the Iranian Defense Ministry published another set of statements emphasizing that "the Iranian nation still sees the US as the number one enemy of the Islamic Revolution." The flurry of attacks came a few days after the Wall Street Journal published a report surveying moves by the White House seemingly aimed at establishing "an effective state of detente" between Washington and Tehran. The outlet highlighted among other things how the administration has "markedly softened its confrontational stance toward Iran’s most important nonstate allies, the Palestinian militant group Hamas and the Lebanese militant and political organization, Hezbollah." That report was followed by another describing a furious backlash to those moves, in which "U.S. lawmakers... voic[ed] concern and criticism over warming ties between the Obama administration and Iran, calling it a strategic miscalculation and an affront to Washington’s decades-long alliance with Israel." On Monday Washington Institute Managing Director Michael Singh assessed that any warming of relations "have been decidedly one-sided," with the U.S. permitting Iran to promote its interests across Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq at the expense of Washington's declared goals in those areas. Singh described U.S. shifts across each region and concluded that "what has changed is not Iran’s strategy but the American response... we are choosing to overlook, rather than counter, long-standing Iranian policies."

The sister of Hamas spokesperson Moussa Abu Marzouk is being treated for cancer in an Israeli hospital, Israel Radio reported today. The report did not mention at which hospital 60-year-old Halamia Shcata was being treated but did note that her condition is critical. She is reportedly suffering from late-stage cancer. Hamas leaders continually call for the destruction of the Jewish State on the political level but also send their sick family members to Israel for medical care. Marzouk’s sister, Shcata, is the latest to receive medical treatment in Israel. Two weeks ago, it was reported that Gazan Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh had turned to the Tel Aviv Soraski Medical Center for emergency medical treatment for one of his 13 children. Haniyeh’s mother-in-law and his granddaughter were also given medical care at Israeli hospitals. (via Israel21c)